


say you'll remember me (even if it's in your wildest dreams)

by titasjournal



Category: Meryl Streep - Fandom, Out of Africa - Isak Dinesen
Genre: first person like the novel :), help i love feeling pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 10:51:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16852663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/titasjournal/pseuds/titasjournal
Summary: two-part series about two different couples. based on the song "wildest dreams" by taylor swift.part one is about karen x denys and their last night together.part two will be up soon.





	say you'll remember me (even if it's in your wildest dreams)

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy this thing my mind urged me to write. Not beta'd so any mistakes are mine. I do not own the characters not the story. Please review, I not only appreciate it but i also need it to improve so don't be a stranger and let me know what you think in the comments or tweet me @titasjournall!

 

> _"With rue my heart is laden_  
>  For golden friends I had,  
>  For many a rose-lipt maiden  
>  And many a lightfoot lad." 
> 
> _A. E. Housman_

 

  **He said, "Let's get out of this town**  
 **Drive out of the city**  
 **Away from the crowds"**

 

While we danced on the damp grass where the remainders of my furniture laid, Denys asked me if he could accompany me to Mombasa. I agreed in what seemed like an instant, our small bit of dialogue still fresh as a realist painting in my mind:

_“You’ve ruined it for me, you know?_

_What?_

_Being alone.”_

Denys had once told me that he did not know the scientific basis for it, but that you could see further into the African night than any other place. But right then, all our quarrels put asunder, being held lovingly in his arms, I knew there was no logic behind it: it was the wind of the savanna blowing through our hair, it was the colors of the trees and fruits and animals that were vibrant even if you were to close your eyes, it was the humid air and the ever-present heat that drove me to search for his eyes and look farther into him than I had ever dared to before.

The great chasm between us, I found, was that our desires were fundamentally different – I strived for freedom of the mind, while he craved freedom of the body. My uncanny ability to escape from this world and leap into another through stories, I knew, was the basis of the love Denys developed for me through the years. Since the day we crossed paths, all the stories I’ve told had been crafted so that he could sit patiently by the fire and hear my voice as he lived through my fantasies.

He provided for me too, though. To Denys Finch-Hatton I owe what was, I think, the greatest, the most transporting pleasure of my life on the farm: I flew with him over Africa. You have tremendous views as you get up above the African highlands, surprising combinations and changes of light and coloring, the rainbow on the green sunlit land, the gigantic upright clouds and big wild black storms, all swing around you in a race and a dance. The lashing hard showers of rain whiten the air askance. The language is short of words to describe the experience of flying, and I will have to invent new words with time. Every time that we have gone up in the air and looking down, realizing that I was free from the ground, I have had the consciousness of a great discovery: “I see,” I told him then, “This was the idea. And now I understand everything.”

That was not the first instance when I felt quite like that. Once, Denys took me on safari.

I have learned a great deal about Denys in the days we spent on safari. One night, while we were having dinner, he commented on the natives side-eyeing the tents. Then, he mentioned Kanuthia briefly and his eyes darted to the fruit he was pealing – they were a darker shade of green, from what I could discern in the African night. That was the night I learned that Denys was sensitive, and that he wasn’t the solitary creature he strived to appear. I saw a great deal of love in his eyes.

He then spoke of imprisoning the natives – and how that was so against their nature. I understood that they could not grasp the concept of a free future once encaged and because of that, they would eventually die. That was the argument Denys had been implicitly trying to use to explain that the natives lived in what he would refer to as _the now,_ but I could not accept that we too should behave in such a way. Why should our behavior be so clear that we should not take advantage of our imagination to picture a different future for ourselves? Hadn’t that been how lands had been won and books had been crafted? I knew then that I did not want to live in _the now_ , not fully, for fear I would lose all of my stories – the told and, perhaps most importantly, the untold.

As we laid in bed the night before Denys had been killed, the day before I was to leave Africa, he asked me for another story – the last we would ever share. Even without knowing the tragedy that would be taking place the following day, I knew in my heart we would be apart for the rest of our lives – in body at least – and so, fueled by the lack of shame, I spoke into the moonlit room:

“I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills,” and he listened patiently, arms wrapped around my naked body. “The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the north, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet.”

Denys, understanding where I had been coming from, placed his hands on either side of my waist and turned me fully towards him, so we would be laying parallel to each other. I carried on: “In the day-time you felt that you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.”

Denys concentrated on the retelling of my life on the farm – which swiftly metamorphosed into _our_ lives together in Kenya. Every once in a while, he would interrupt me to softly peck my lips or to languidly run his hands down my body. I did not mind this. It seemed to me that he had then been trying to memorize me as I had been trying to memorize him all those years prior.  

Then, I began to tell him of my insecurities in leaving the farm: “If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me?”

And he would not answer me with words, for those were solely my domain. Instead he would take my tear-streaked face in his hands and softly kiss my lips until a sob subsided. But, when I proved to be too shaken to continue, his kisses would become ferocious. His mouth would ravage mine in a feeble attempt to preserve my verve, his tongue touching mine lovingly, but his hands frantically moving up and down my body. Then, when I was strong enough to continue, I told him: “Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?”

I could not finish my story, for it had no real end yet. He understood, and in an attempt to give it one, he kissed down my exposed neck, trailing my skin sloppily down to my stomach. I tore away the sheets and lovingly placed his head between my thighs. He kissed me like he had all those years ago on safari, as he had all the days he would arrive to the farm after that. In that moment I had realized I had never opened my eyes and saw him like this, presenting his love to me in such a giving manner. So I opened my eyes and looked downward, and saw he looked akin to an angel with his golden hair and pure touch. It was then, at the high of my pleasure, that I decided to express my biggest fear to him: “Will he remember me standing in a nice dress, staring at the orange-clad sunset? Will he see me again in the song of African birds or on the great plains where lions rest?”

Denys moved upwards and brought his face close to mine so he would be looking straight into my coffee-colored eyes. What he told me next, I remember, was the last line of the story I couldn’t bear to finish, and the reason as to why it meant to me as much as the feeling I had when he first took me flying was because he had gone against his one true belief of freedom in this life: “Karen,” his voice absorbed by my skin. “My rose-lipped maiden.”

 

 


End file.
